EPICS Archiver Appliance Datasource

Visualize EPICS Archiver Appliance on Grafana.

See Archiver Appliance site for more information about Archiver Appliance.

Features

• Select multiple PVs by using Regex (Only supports wildcard pattern like PV.* and alternation pattern like PV(1|2))
• Legend alias with regular expression pattern
• Data retrieval with data processing (See Archiver Appliance User Guide for processing of data)
• Using PV names for Grafana variables
• Transform your data with processing functions
• Live update with stream feature
• Find and notify problems with alerting feature

Installing the plugin

Install using releases

1. Download a pre-built release from the releases page.

2. Unzip the contents in the Grafana plugins folder.

3. This plugin is unsigned. It must be specially listed by name in the Grafana grafana.ini file to allow Grafana to use it. Add sasaki77-archiverappliance-datasource to the allow_loading_unsigned_plugins parameter in the [plugins] section.

Install using Git

Clone this plugin into grafana plugins directory; the default is /var/lib/grafana/plugins.

Configuring the plugin

Please consult [https://sasaki77.github.io/archiverappliance-datasource/configuration.html] for instructions to configure the plugin following installation.

Documentaion

Documentation is available at https://sasaki77.github.io/archiverappliance-datasource.

Configuration

This section lists the available configuration options for the Archiver Appliance data source.

Query editor

Configuration	Description
PV	Set PV name to be visualized. It is allowed to set multiple PVs by using Regular Expressoins alternation pattern (e.g. (PV:1|PV:2)).
Regex	Enable/disable Regex mode. Refer Select Multiple PVs by Regex.
Operator	Controls processing of data during data retrieval (Default: mean). Refer Archiver Appliance User Guide about processing of data. Special operator raw and last are also available. raw allows to retrieve the data without processing. last allows to retrieve the last data in the specified time range.
Stream	Enable/Disable Stream mode. Stream allows to periodically update the data without refreshing the dashboard. The difference data from the last updated values is only retrieved.
Interval	Streaming interval in milliseconds. You can also use a number with unit. e.g. 1s, 1m, 1h. The default is determined by a width of panel and time range.
Capacity	The stream data is stored in a circular buffer. Capacity determines the buffer size. The default is detemined by a initial data size.
Alias	Set alias for legend.
Alias pattern	Set regular expressoin pattern to use PV name for legend alias. Refer Legend Alias with Regex Pattern
Function	Apply processing function for retrieved data. Refer Apply Processing Functions

Variables

Variables are supported for PV names registered in Archiver Appliance.

You can use regular expression pattern same as Query Edit. Only wildcard pattern and alternation pattern are available.

You can also use another variable as a part of query. For example, you have variable group, which is a list of PV name prefixes according to PV naming rules on your institute.

Below is a query in this case.

${group}:.*

Default maximum number of PV names you can use in variables is 100. Limit parameter is available to change maxmum number. Parameters must be follow ? character.

PV:NAME:.*?limit=1000

Development setup

This data source plugin consists of both frontend and backend components.

Front-end Development

Node version v12.x is recommended. If you're new to the Node.js ecosystem, Node Version Manager is a good place to start for managing different Node.js installations and environments.

grafana-toolkit is used to develop the plugin. Please refer grafana-toolkit documentation for more information.

1. Begin by installing Yarn (https://yarnpkg.com/)

npm install -g yarn

2. Install dependencies

yarn install

3. Build plugin in development mode or run in watch mode

yarn dev

or

yarn watch

4. Build plugin in production mode

yarn build

Back-end Development

If the Mage build tool is not already installed, you may install it using the installation instructions on the Mage homepage

1. Update Grafana plugin SDK for Go dependency to the latest minor version:

go get -u github.com/grafana/grafana-plugin-sdk-go

2. Build backend plugin binaries for Linux, Windows and Darwin:

mage -v

3. List all available Mage targets for additional commands:

mage -l

Test environment with Docker Compose

Thanks to pklaus / docker-archiver-appliance and pklaus / archiver-appliance-with-example-ioc, the test environment is available with Docker Compose.

docker-compose up

The following containers are runinng after docker-compse up.

Name	Description
grafana	Runs a Grafana server.
archappl	Runs a EPICS Archiver Appliance.
redis	Runs a datastore for the persistance of the appliance configuration.
example	Runs a example EPICS IOC to be archived.

To set up the Archiver Appliance, open http://localhost:17665/mgmt/ui/index.html. You can add the PVs served by the example IOC on this page. Enter the following lines in the input field and then clicking the Archive button. the Archive will be start a few minuites later.

root:circle:tick
root:circle:step
root:circle:period
root:line:b
root:aiExample
root:aiExample1
root:ai1
root:aiExample2
root:ai2
root:aiExample3
root:ai3
root:EXAMPLE:version
root:compressExample
root:circle:angle
root:line:a
root:circle:x
root:circle:y
root:calcExample
root:calcExample1
root:calc1
root:calcExample2
root:calc2
root:calcExample3
root:calc3

To add a data source, open Grafana (http://localhost:3000). On the data sources page, add a data source and set URL as http://archappl:17665/retrieval.

The following is a example query with this test environment.

Build documentation

python -m venv env
source env/bin/activate
pip install sphinx commonmark recommonmark sphinx_rtd_theme sphinx-markdown-tables
make html

Build Status

Build:	Status:
Latest release
Master Branch
Local Master Branch
Local Latest Branch